"There is no agreement in place with anybody to allow extraction of lithium or any other minerals from the geothermal wells in California," Jessi Strawn, a spokeswoman for Berkshire Hathaway Energy Co, which is majority-owned by Warren Buffett's conglomerate, said in an emailed response to a Reuters query. The Financial Times earlier had reported, citing people familiar with the discussions, that the venture has been in talks to supply Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) with lithium, a component for batteries to power electric cars.

"There is no agreement in place with anybody to allow extraction of lithium or any other minerals from the geothermal wells in California," Jessi Strawn, a spokeswoman for Berkshire Hathaway Energy Co, which is majority-owned by Warren Buffett's conglomerate, said in an emailed response to a Reuters query. The Financial Times earlier had reported, citing people familiar with the discussions, that the venture has been in talks to supply Tesla Inc with lithium, a component for batteries to power electric cars.

The following are the top stories in the Financial Times. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. Headlines Big banks embrace fintech to exploit disrupters' expertise ...

The venture has been in talks to supply Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) with lithium, a component for batteries to power electric cars, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the company. Berkshire Hathaway's geothermal wells could produce up to 90,000 tonnes of lithium a year worth $1.5 billion at current prices, the report said, citing a fundraising document.

The venture has been in talks to supply Tesla Inc with lithium, a component for batteries to power electric cars, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the company. Berkshire Hathaway's geothermal wells could produce up to 90,000 tonnes of lithium a year worth $1.5 billion at current prices, the report said, citing a fundraising document.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has made a move into lithium, holding talks over an agreement to allow extraction of the battery mineral from its geothermal wells in California. The venture hopes to ...

Shutdown Continues: Will Trump Get His Wall?WallsThe US government shutdown, which started on December 22, has entered its 28th day. To be sure, by taking an aggressive stance on the border wall, Trump is trying to deliver on one of his key

In 2013, Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio) sat down with Caroline Ghosn, the co-founder of Levo League, an enterprise set up to help young women in the first phase of their careers. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 3 Warning Sign with BRK.A. Click here to check it out. The most interesting part of the interview was towards the end when Ghosn asked a few questions from the "audience," members of the Levo League and other Buffett followers who sent in questions via Twitter.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s NetJets reached a new agreement with its pilots union that increases pay for pilots and extends their contract another three years. The private-jet company and its largest union, said the agreement marks how far labor relations at the company have come since 2015, when contentious negotiations led pilots to protest publicly and drew investors’ attention. The high-profile labor unrest was unusual for a Berkshire company.

The tentative agreement with the NetJets Association of Shared Aircraft Pilots, which represents 2,500 pilots, boosts pay and retirement benefits, and changes the compensation structure so that pilots who fly more are paid more. NetJets and the union said in a joint statement on Thursday that the accord followed six weeks of talks, which the Columbus, Ohio-based company began though the pilots' 2015 contract wasn't scheduled to expire until 2023. "The NJASAP Executive Board is exceedingly pleased with the outcome of this negotiation -- an ambitious undertaking characterized by honesty, goodwill and a genuine commitment to continuing collaboration," said union president, Pedro Leroux.

NetJets, the luxury plane unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc, has extended its contract with its pilots union by three years, avoiding the labor strife it had with the union earlier this decade. The tentative agreement with the NetJets Association of Shared Aircraft Pilots, which represents 2,500 pilots, boosts pay and retirement benefits, and changes the compensation structure so that pilots who fly more are paid more. NetJets and the union said in a joint statement on Thursday that the accord followed six weeks of talks, which the Columbus, Ohio-based company began though the pilots' 2015 contract wasn't scheduled to expire until 2023.

John Bogle, who died yesterday aged 89, made himself the Caesar of our markets through his Vanguard index funds, which seek to track the market at the lowest possible cost to investors. Let the eulogy begin:
Friends, Americans, investors. I come to bury Bogle, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones; so let it be with Bogle.
Jack Bogle created the index fund, teaching that most people aren't going to beat the market, and that if a fund merely reflects that market, ordinary investors can enjoy its fruits at very low cost.
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In this, he was right … as right as right can be. If you put just $100 into the Vanguard 500 Index Fund (NYSEARCA:VFINX) when it was launched in 1976, about the time I graduated from college, you would have $733,400. If you just put $100 away every year, in that single fund, you'd be rich.
### The Zombie Market
But even Bogle knew you can have too much of a good thing. Index funds are passive owners of stocks, taking the bad with the good, believing everything will even out.
Just last year Bogle warned, however, that passive funds could create problems for investors and the national interest specifically because of this passivity. Vanguard, Blackrock and State Street, the largest index fund sponsors, control 81% of all index funds, and index funds in turn own 17.2% of all U.S.-listed securities.
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Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A, NYSE:BRK.B) vice chairman Charlie Munger explained it this way in 2015. Index funds are permanent owners who never sell, he said, and usually vote management's interests. Vanguard's decisions in 2013 to vote against re-electing directors at Hewlett-Packard and Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY) were notable for being unusual. They were not part of a trend.
When index funds own the market, figuring that good and bad management will even out, you create a zombie market, one that can no longer punish bad actions or control runaway boards. Corporate democracy is already under threat from two-tier ownership structures like those of Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL, NASDAQ:GOOG) and Under Armour (NYSE:UAA), which guarantee the founders and their heirs control of the company through unequal voting weight, even if they sell out a majority stake, die or run off to some Caribbean island.
Index funds transform corporations from quasi-democracies into kingdoms.
### What Hope Do We Have?
Bogle remains right. Most investors don't have both the time and inclination to follow the stock market the way reporters or financial analysts do. For most investors, getting money into the market regularly, and at the lowest possible cost, is the right strategy.
The responsibility of index fund managers in overseeing corporate governance has thus become a subject of wide-ranging debate among market insiders. Vanguard will usually vote to re-elect directors if most are outsiders, but just how "outside" are "outside directors?" We usually don't find out until there's a scandal, and their faces are thrown up on TV like a criminal line-up.
If funds spend time and money policing boards, they're no longer passive, and their fees must rise. If they don't, corporate malfeasance runs rampant.
### The Bottom Line
The story of my life is that regular investing is the way to wealth, just as Bogle says.
But that doesn't mean investors should be as passive as the managers of their funds. My view is that once you have a nest egg you should be aggressive, placing bets on the leading edge of technology, which today means cloud applications and biotech. As you age, you should pull back, choosing big stocks that can afford dividends and bonds for income.
Jack Bogle's great achievement was to overturn the conventional wisdom of his day, but his legacy was to create a new conventional wisdom, and as he said so often, "conventional wisdom is usually wrong."
Dana Blankenhorn is a financial and technology journalist. He is the author of a new mystery thriller, The Reluctant Detective Finds Her Family, available now at the Amazon Kindle store. Write him at danablankenhorn@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @danablankenhorn. As of this writing he owned shares in VTI, the Vanguard Total Stock Market fund, and VWIGX, the Vanguard International Growth Fund.
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The post It's Time to Listen to John Bogle appeared first on InvestorPlace.

Can Warren Buffett Outperform the Markets in 2019?(Continued from Prior Part)FAANG As we noted previously, Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK-B) chairman, has generally stayed away from technology stocks over the last 50 years. He did invest

Can Warren Buffett Outperform the Markets in 2019?(Continued from Prior Part)Tech stocksWarren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK-B) chairman, hasn’t been a fan of technology stocks. Technology stocks haven’t been Buffett’s area of

News this week that drugstore chain Walgreens Boots Alliance (NASDAQ:WBA) and software behemoth Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) are teaming up to inject some fresh tech into Walgreens stores brought cheers from investors. WBA stock holders were pleased, to be sure, knowing too well that the company hasn't kept up with rivals' business-building partnership development.
Yet, as the celebration winds down, tough questions are starting to surface. Chief among them is, how exactly will this WBA-MSFT alliance bolster the bottom line? A close-second (and related) question is: how exactly will this partnership change the way consumers receive care?
Maybe good answers will come in time, but as it stands right now, there are no answers at all.
InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips
### Just Another Partnership?
The short version of a long story: Health care's a mess in America. Aside from being too expensive for consumers and too inefficient for all players, it's also often ineffective. The federal government has thus far been powerless to get a grip on any of those challenges.
That's largely why we've seen a wave of M&A within the industry over the past several years -- players are doing what they can just to survive and still give decent care.
That deal-making took on a whole new tone a year ago, however, when Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) and Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A, NYSE:BRK.B) teamed up to develop their own kind of health care organization.
The aim of this venture isn't to drive profits. The three organizations are partnering primarily to cull their own realized costs of providing health benefits for their employees. Nevertheless, the creation of an in-house solution was also an unspoken message that the nation's health care industry was no longer capable of doing what it should be able to do.
Other less-shocking partnerships sent a similar message. CVS Health (NYSE:CVS) now owns insurer Aetna, crossing a line not all consumers/patients are sure they want crossed. Meanwhile, Humana (NYSE:HUM) and CVS have forged an alliance, of sorts. In fact, Aetna and Humana would now be the same company had the Justice department not put the kibosh on the deal.
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In that light, the Walgreens-Microsoft partnership looks and feels like the next natural progression of the industry. Owners of Walgreens stock, however, may want to take a closer look at the deal… not so much at what was said, but wasn't said.
### No Clear Plan For 7-Year Deal
The precise plans for the team-up shouldn't be -- and arguably can't be -- disclosed, as it's unlikely even the companies themselves know what this seven-year deal will lead to seven years from now.
Still, one would expect at least a bit more clarity on how the development will boost business.
The key tenets of the deal include the use of Microsoft's office-productivity software by Walgreens employees, making self-care options available to patients (presumably through an app), and the reduction of friction between payers and providers. Some Walgreens stores will also, as a pilot program, dedicate floor space to sales of medical hardware and devices that (again, presumably) make the most out of the other improvements at-hand.
It all sounds compelling. A second glance at the announcement, however, also reads like little more than a marketing brochure. The partnership's goals are also the same as those that every other player in the health care arena hopes to achieve.
The question then becomes, how are Walgreens and Microsoft going to differentiate what they're going to do from the drug store operator's competitors? It's easy to say the aim is making self-care and prescriptions a seamless experience. Far more difficult is convincing consumers to use such a tool, and then teaching them to use it. Constant changes to health insurance policies only exacerbate the confusion that patients may not be able to address themselves, and Microsoft's role in Walgreens' push of new medical devices is fuzzy at best.
Candidly, too, the deal also comes across a little bit desperate.
Walgreens CEO Stefano Pessina initially said he wasn't worried about Amazon's 2018 acquisition of online pharmacy PillPack. "This partnership with Microsoft suggests otherwise," said drug supply chain expert Stephen Buck on Tuesday. Making deals from a have-to position is starkly different than want-to deals.
And there's the rub. At this point, with most of the best potential partnerships already off the table, Walgreens' interest is in partnerships without an entirely clear purpose or meaningful plan.
CVS wanted Aetna for obvious reasons, but also for less obvious reasons like leveraging CVS's pharmacy benefits management wing and using existing stores to build out a network of mini-clinics that will ultimately lower costs for all. Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan are just trying to save money. Cigna Holding (NYSE:CI) wanted Express Scripts so it could also gain control of its costs by controlling a pharmacy benefits manager.
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In contrast, the Microsoft partnership with Walgreens (as impressive as some of the technology rollouts may end up being) doesn't look like it will accomplish anything that Walgreens couldn't achieve with several other tech companies… whatever it ends up accomplishing.
### Bottom Line for Walgreens Stock
Don't misread the message. The alliance isn't an ill-advised decision, nor will it end up crimping the value of WBA stock. Indeed, the two organizations may have something game-changing in mind that can't yet be divulged.
It's more likely than not, however, that the team-up is no more and no less than it currently seems to be on the surface. That is, a modernization of the Walgreens IT infrastructure. It's a smart and necessary step, but it's not the game-changer the stores need if WBA aims to prevent more team-ups like the Amazon/Berkshire/JPMorgan partnership and CVS's in-house clinics from siphoning away customers.
In that light, the far-less-touted work Walgreens is doing with Google's life-sciences arm Verily -- to better manage chronic illnesses -- offers more promise for real revenue creation.
Even then though, it may not be enough to light a fire under WBA stock anytime soon. Edward Jones analyst John Boylan noted last month, before the Microsoft team-up was unveiled, "Many of these partnerships are still in their very early stages, and we would like to see if these services will have a notable impact on growth and profitability, and if its cost cutting efforts will counteract the continuing reimbursement pressure we are seeing in the drugstore market."
Walgreens still needs something big, above and beyond the acquisition of rivals' stores, and it needs it sooner rather than later.
As of this writing, James Brumley did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. You can follow him on Twitter, at @jbrumley.
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Privately owned businesses do not experience the volatility of public companies since they are not exposed to the psychology of investors, or what Benjamin Graham called Mr. Market. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 1 Warning Sign with AMZN.

Warning! GuruFocus has detected 1 Warning Sign with DJCO. During the meeting, Munger shared his thoughts on some of the critical issues of the day, as well as provided some general investment insights. One of these was the notion that "good ideas can hurt you." Munger was referring to the dotcom bubble, which was still playing out at the time.

Can Warren Buffett Outperform the Markets in 2019?(Continued from Prior Part)Warren BuffettAs we noted in the previous part, Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK-B) outperformance compared to the S&P 500 (SPY) has been declining. Overall, 1976 was the